The centralization of ownership of the private media in the United States and elsewhere has become increasingly pronounced, at the same time that its reporting has become increasingly one-sided and monolithic. My blog seeks to expose this lack of objectivity and present alternative ideas that point in the direction of much-needed fundamental change.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

MY REVIEW OF THE BOOK “BUILDING THE COMMUNE” BY GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER

Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela
Ellner, Steve. NACLA Report on the Americas; New York 49 no. 1 (Spring 2017):
118-120.

Building the Commune is a provocative and superbly
written book with a well-defined thesis. Ciccariello-Maher argues that given
the deficiencies and underperformance of established institutions in Venezuela-including
the country's governing Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist
Party of Venezuela, PSUV), the military, and the state's executive branch-the
best hope for the political survival of the Chavista government and the
achievement of its long-term socialist goals is the commune system. As the
author succinctly states in the book's last paragraph: "The time has come
to bet it all on the communes."

The communes were promoted by the government of Hugo
Chavez through the Law of the Communes in 2010 in order to bring together
adjoining community councils for the purpose of undertaking public works
projects on a wider scale. The communes and community councils apply for state
funding for projects, monitor their progress, and select their work force from
members of the community. In addition, the communes are
designed to encourage the formation of community enterprises known as
"social production companies" (EPSs). For the Chavistas, the communes
represent the germ of the new society they are trying to create.

The book's narrative about Venezuela's communes is rich
in detail. Ciccariello-Maher provides a vivid account of the economic and
cultural activities of various communes in both urban and non-urban areas. The
economic and cultural focus is strengthened by conversations with Reinaldo
Iturriza, who after heading the country's Communes Ministry, was appointed
Minister of Culture in 2014. Communes described in the book include the El
Maizal Commune in western Venezuela, whose agricultural output is allegedly
twice the nation's average; the Ataroa Commune in Barquisimeto, which manages a
cement block EPS and is committed to the "ethos of sustainability";
and the El Panal Commune in Caracas' famed 23 de Enero neighborhood, which runs
a bakery, sugar-packaging plant, and supermarket.

Ciccariello-Maher writes in the tradition of bottomup
historian E.P. Thompson, as can be deduced from the title of his previous book
We Created Chavez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution, published
in 2013. Ciccariello-Maher argues that the 2010 Law of the Communes served to
"legally recognize''-and help consolidate and expand-the communes, but
notes that the commune movement had emerged from the grassroots in previous
years. The author presents several examples of this pattern of initiative and
innovation from below-for example, the case of a group of neighbors in Caracas
whose houses were destroyed by a landslide and who seized an abandoned building
"before pressuring the government to expropriate it.''

Ciccariello-Maher ends the book pointing out that the
mainstream press got it wrong when they predicted the demise of the Chavista
revolution following the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013. Chavismo was never
"a one-man show," he argues, and "to suggest otherwise is an
insult to those who were building the revolution decades before Chavez,
and...to those who continue to build revolutionary state power today." In
this way, the author departs from orthodox Marxist thinking by defining
socialism along political rather than economic lines. For Ciccariello-Maher,
the essence of socialism in Venezuela is "radical democracy."
Building the Commune says little, for instance, about the elimination of
powerful monopolistic or semi-monopolistic economic groups-goals prioritized by
the traditional Left. In accordance with the concept of "dual power"
originally proposed by Lenin, Ciccariello-Maher envisions a new state that
battles an old one. The former consists of communes and other institutions of
direct popular participation underpinned by social movements, while the latter
takes in representative institutions such as municipal and state governments.
According to the author, himself a political theorist, the goal of twenty-first
century socialism "was to transform political power itself." With
regard to the economy, Ciccariello-Maher asserts that "production is only
a means, not the end. The goal is self-government." Elsewhere, Ciccariello-Maher
points out that for Chavez, what he called
"communal culture" was the most important aspect of the commune.

An alternative view of the state put forward by Marta
Harnecker and Greek Marxist Nicos Poulantzas is that the old state is not enemy
territory but rather, in the words of Poulantzas, a "strategic battlefield."
This is particularly true when progressives are in power. According to both
writers, popular sectors establish an important presence in three arenas-the
old state, emerging new state structures, and autonomous social movements-and
it is in these spaces where they wage struggles that will determine the
ultimate makeup of the state. As applied to Venezuela, this theory gives
greater weight than does Ciccariello-Maher to the initiatives originating from
above-specifically those emanating from the central government-in the
transformation and radicalization of the nation since 1998, when Chavez was
first elected to power. Numerous examples of the interplay of top-down and
bottom-up initiatives are worth considering. One is the state's expropriation
of the steel company Sidor in 2008 and the establishment of worker decision-making
mechanisms known as the Plan Socialista de Guayana in this same industry the
following year. More recently, the neighborhood food distribution program known
as the Comites Locales de Abastecimiento y Produccion (Local Supply and
Production Committees, CLAP) has shown itself to obey the same dynamic: a
potentially far-reaching government measure that emerges in response to
rank-and-file sentiment and pressure.

To be sure, Ciccariello-Maher recognizes the positive
role of the state, but he does so in a more limited way. He correctly observes
that government support invigorates popular organizations, but "if state
funding becomes a substitute for grassroots organizing" it, in the words
of scholar Andres Antillano, "'very quickly undermines [the]...very
organization it helped to create."' In another break with orthodox Marxism
that favors the prioritization of the commune, Ciccariello-Maher questions
"traditional Marxist dogmas about the revolutionary working class."
Rather than positing the fundamental importance of centers of production,
namely factories, he praises the model of "Venezuela's distinctively
territorialized socialism."

Ciccariello-Maher's upbeat account may be open to
question, even while the developments he describes undoubtedly leave room for a
degree of optimism. He claims that after Chavez's death in 2013 and under the
direction of Communes Minister Iturriza, "there was a dramatic expansion
of the communes," citing the official statistic that 1,546 communes exist
in the country. But it is unclear how many of the communes approximate the
productivity and sustainability of the ones he selected to describe in detail.
A related issue is Ciccariello-Maher's rosy account of subjective conditions -
that is, the degree to which people favor and are committed to the changes
being proposed - and just how widespread the zeal of the communal members he
interviews actually is. Admittedly, no easy measuring rod or quantitative
methodology facilitates the evaluation of subjective conditions, but the issue
is far from academic as it is central to any political strategy for change.

Even without such precision, Building the Commune
represents an invaluable contribution to the analysis of twenty-first century Venezuelan
politics from a critical leftist perspective and is original in its framing of
key issues related to the future direction of the
Chavista movement. Ciccariello-Maher's insights could not come at a better time
given the corporate media's distortion of recent political developments that
threaten the Chavistas' retention of power. Most important, the book clearly
demonstrates two outstanding achievements of Chavista rule: the stimulation of
popular participation and empowerment, both of which are downplayed-if not
completely ignored-by the adversaries of the Venezuelan process of change.

Author Affiliation
Steve Ellner, a frequent NACLA contributor, is currently coordinating an issue
of Latin American Perspectives titled "Progressive Governments and Class
Strategies in Latin America: Populist and Pragmatic Policies in a Broader
Context." His “Implications of Marxist State Theories and How They Play
Out in Venezuela” is slated to appear in the next issue of Historical
Materialism.

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About Me

Steve Ellner has taught economic history at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela since 1977. He is the author of numerous books and journal and magazine articles on Venezuela history and politics. He frequently lectures on Venezuela and Latin American political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American history at the University of New Mexico in 1980.